$1.3 trillion budget clears Senate after Rand Paul drops opposition | McClatchy Washington Bureau

The Senate cleared a $1.3 trillion spending bill early Friday, hours after Sen. Rand Paul brought progress to a halt.

The bill cleared the chamber by a vote of 65 to 32, with Paul voting against it after an afternoon and evening spent hunkered down in his Senate office reading and critiquing the 2,232 page spending bill he considers a monstrosity of bloated government spending.

“Congress must do better for the American people,” Paul said “We can support our military without further endangering our nation through fiscal recklessness.”

Paul had spent much of Thursday night blasting out his criticism of the bill after it cleared the House.

“On page 207. 2000+ pages to go!” Paul tweeted at one point. “Reading about the ever wasteful $6 billion National Science Foundation.”

At page 226 of what he called a “terrible, no good, rotten deficit spending bill,” he discovered something he could support, tweeting “I found a kernel of hope: ‘no funds in this act will be used to support or justify torture.’ “

His colleagues, who had harshly criticized Paul last month when his opposition to a spending bill triggered a short-lived government shutdown, remained optimistic. The government was not at risk of closing down until 12:01 a.m. on Saturday.

“Any senator can decide to string out the process, but I remain hopeful,” said Senate Majority Whip Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who last month called Paul’s tactics “grossly irresponsible.”

Cornyn cited the healthy margin of victory for the legislation in the House, which cleared the bill Thursday by a 256-167 vote. “ I think people realize the handwriting is on the wall,” Cornyn said.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters he hoped to vote on the measure “as soon as we can.”

Had he talked to his fellow Republican senator? “We’ll find out in the next few hours how quickly we’ll be able to move,” was all the ever-careful McConnell would say.

Paul suggested Thursday night that he had made his point and would not seek to block passage.

“It’s never been my goal to shut down government," he told Fox News. He said he’d continue to push for reading the bill, but acknowledged “They can roll over me, I’m in the minority.”

He said he expected about 10 to 15 Republicans would vote against the bill: “They will win, the majority will win. But it’s Republicans and Democrats joining hands together to blow a hole in the debt,” he said.

Some senators earlier were clearly frustrated with Paul.

“I was actually hoping that he got it out of his system three weeks ago,” said Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo.

Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., acknowledged “one or two senators” could block the measure, but he stopped short of criticizing Paul, instead blaming the legislative process that has left most budget writing to be conducted by congressional leaders behind closed doors.

The 2,232 spending bill was released late Wednesday night; the House voted on it less than 24 hours later, with Republicans and Democrats complaining that they did not have the time to read it.

So Paul read it.

Paul wasn’t the only senator opposed to the spending bill. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., launched a scathing indictment, likening it to a “Great Dane-size whiz down the leg of every taxpayer in America.”

He complained that he’d have to go to “K Street” — legendary in Washington for its lobbyist shops — to determine what was in the legislation. But Kennedy said he didn’t want a government shutdown.

Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus largely voted against the measure and fumed at the closed-door negotiations and lack of time to deliberate.

“There’s not a single member of Congress who read that bill before they voted on it,” said Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., the chair of the caucus, who voted no. “I made it to page 700.”

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who supports the spending measure, ran into Paul in the Senate gym Thursday morning, but gleaned little about his strategy.

“He had a poker face, he didn’t indicate one way or the other what he was planning to do,” Rubio said, adding that he thought it would be in bad taste to talk too much business at the gym.

“I just said, ‘Oh, it’s interesting we might vote on the omnibus today,’ to see if I could elicit a response,” Rubio said.

But Paul wasn’t having it. “He talked something about baseball,” Rubio said.

Later, Paul from his office in the Russell office building, would make his point clear: